When this movie was made, I know that the makers didn’t plan on releasing it as international hit that would gross over US$300 Million. What I want to know is, if this movie hadn’t been picked up by a distributor, how was this movie supposed to recoup the $50,000 they spent on it?
And ditto for other small budget movies never intended to make the cinema?
Movie making is a gamble. You don’t always make your money back.
I heard that the $50,000 was the cost to shoot the move, not make it; that the editing cost even more than that.
I thought it was only a $30,000 budget, but I could be wrong.
Every filmmaker hopes his work will be a hit, but most realize that it’s often very hard to recoup the cost of production. The producers probably thought they might be able to make a little money in a video release, and maybe one of the “oogah-boogah” shows on teevee would pick it up. They probably hoped for at least a limited theatrical release. This type of show was very popular in the 1970s (There was a movie in the 70s called “The Legend of (something) Swamp” or something like that, that was a dramatization of a purportedly real event, that did very well.)
These cats knew what they were doing. They interviewed many, many actors to get just the right ones. I don’t know how they set up the financing, but I’m sure they had investors. Investors expect to be repaid, and to make a profit.
A friend of mine made a film called Cut Up. This 16mm production cost about $42,000 (very low budget, even for an indie film). He expected it to make some money. Unfortunately the distributor that wanted to release it domestically also wanted international rights, and he sold the international rights a couple weeks before he heard from that company. He finally did get a domestic distributor and there have been some sales to Blockbuster. Another friend made a film called Bang that cost (IIRC) $12,000 on 16mm. Hollywood Video picked that one up right away. (Black filmmakers and “gangsta” themes were very popular at the time. Good timing.) Then there was Zombie! vs. Mardi Gras. This is a rather non-linear, $5,000 film that most reviewers don’t understand. (It helps if you’ve seen some of Goddard’s films, and don’t expect every film you see to follow the Hollywood format.) Zombie! has done very well at underground film festivals and was released directly to video.
You don’t spend a lot of money on a film unless you expect to make it back. I’m sure the producers of TBWP fully expected to make a few bucks, but fortunately for them itexceeded their (probable) expectations.
The way most independent film makers hope to make money is to first show it at a film festival such as Sundance. If it is well recieved it creates a buzz and then they can sell it to a distributor. From there it usually goes into art house theatres or direct to video. A director named Rodriguez, I think, wrote a book about making a movie for 7K which then was picked up by a major distributor.
I heard Blair Witch was made for 60 K.
puddleglum, you’re thinking of Robert Rodriguez who made El Mariachi. He was a film student in (I think) San Antonio, TX. He had friends in Mexico, so he had an idea: Shoot a film and sell it to the Latin American market. He was a “lab rat” at a research hospital to come up with some of the $7,500 budget. He borrowed a non-sync Arri 16S camera and headed south. One of the amazing things is that he shot the film, then reinacted the take for sound! So not only was he using non-sync equipment, but the film and audio were from two different takes! He adited the project on 3/4" video in the school’s studio after hours. He was locked in, so he quickly learned to bring a container for… er, “physiological imperitives”.
Once he had the finished tape, he took it to Los Hideous (I mean Los Angeles) to look for a South American distributor. He got an offer or two, but it was a “let us borrow the tape to review it, and we’ll pay you later” deal. He declined. By enormously good luck, the tape was seen by a major agency who eventually got it to (I think) Columbia Pictures. Since he edited the movie himself and thought that the 3/4" video tape was his final product, he didn’t have any real notes. And Columbia wanted to recut the film for distribution. Rodriguez had to work from memory. I think the cost to get El Mariachi ready for distribution was something like $300,000 plus prints.
Rodriguez’s book, Rebel Without a Crew is a very good read for someone who is interested in low-budget filmmaking.
That’s not all that unusual–think of music videos and every Fellini movie.
toadspittle, you have a point with Fellini’s films. He would have the actors move their mouths and loop the dialog later. Music videos use a different process.
The song is played on a machine that has runs at a very prcise speed (such as a crystal-controlled Nagra deck or a DAT deck). The camera has a crystal-controlled motor so that it runs at exactly 24fps. For film editing, the audio is transferred to “full coat” or “mag film” – film that is covered with an audio recording medium instead of photographic emulsion. You then have a length of audio “film” that can be synched frame-for-frame to the images you filmed.
Rodriguez didn’t have the actors “lip synch” to prerecorded dialog (or music, as in a music video). He filmed the take, then did it again for the audio. The actors had to re-perform the take as exactly as possible so that they might be somewhat in synch with their previous (filmed) performance. Rodriguez wrote that when the dialog got too far out of synch, that he did a cutaway. This resulted in the “fast-paced editing” for which he was so praised.